Search form

Search form

Smart-meter shipments rose by double digits in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, even as deliveries in North America dropped, according to IDC. In its Energy Insights quarterly smart-meter tracker, IDC said shipments increased 11% for the quarter, hitting a record thanks to a surge in demand from the Asia-Pacific region and new deployments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Related Summaries

Elster has designed a smart-meter IC from Analog Devices into the gas and electricity meters it will provide for implementation in the U.K., which plans to install more than 50 million smart meters in homes and small businesses by 2020. The Elster meter design is said to incorporate a ZigBee wireless communications transceiver and a ZigBee network protocol stack provided by Exegin Technologies.

Manufacturers may be tempted to utilize small coin cell batteries to provide backup power to their smart meters, but Texas Instruments applications engineer Chris Glaser says the lower voltage provided by that solution negates its long-term usefulness. In a recent blog post, Glaser calls for a hybrid solution that leverages a bypass converter and low-power boost converter to provide the necessary 3.3V to operate in case of a power interruption.

The worldwide surge in smart meter deployments fueled in part by the economic stimulus package in the U.S. will reach a high of 131 million units in five years and then begin to decline, according to a new report from Navigant Research, which estimates that global shipments of the devices will drop to 114 million annually by 2022. The report found that despite the slowdown, China will continue to be a strong driver of smart meter growth thanks largely to the government's aggressive push to upgrade the nation's energy infrastructure.

Chips going into smart meters will post sales of $1.1 billion in 2016, more than double this year's revenues of $505.6 million, according to IHS iSuppli. Driving this growth will be the spiraling use of smart meters, which the market research firm forecasts will go from 20.5 million units shipped this year to 62 million unit shipments in 2016.